Sanctuary
John Mason, sheriff of the WITSEC town of Sanctuary, sat back in his chair and sipped his coffee. He’d long since gotten over the need to get up and be out and about in the morning. This was the season where he could read the paper and enjoy his third cup. Years of field work as a marshal had ingrained in him a rush of adrenaline. But these days he was married, and his son was happy with their new life. John had a car in a town of pedestrians—a town of almost two hundred protected witnesses who lived peaceably…for the most part.
He set the coffee down and turned the page of the week-old newspaper that had been delivered the day before. Sure he could get news in real-time on the internet, but there was nothing like the feel of newspaper in his hands.
Nothing.
No word on Bolton or Nadia Marie. They were out in the world—two residents he was supposed to be protecting—and he was stuck within the ring of mountains that hid Sanctuary from the outside, trusting his brothers to keep his own people safe.
Ben, the international man of mystery. John still wanted to know what Ben had done to the mayor of Sanctuary to make the old man mad enough to demand John arrest Ben the last time he had been there. But Ben had slipped away. His brother was better put to use applying his skills and substantial resources to finding Bolton and Nadia Marie. From their last conversation he was getting somewhere. Ben never shared, and he always hid stuff up his sleeve. But so long as they were found and returned to safety, Ben could utilize whatever methods he wanted.
Footsteps pounded down from the apartment upstairs, and Pat raced in. The eleven year old still hadn’t lost all of that little-kid exuberance, something John’s brother, Nate—who’d been the Dolphin’s quarterback—never lost in his life. Though at times Pat showed Ben’s more quiet, watchful way of observing things. John had also been forced to contemplate the idea his son might have a girlfriend. There were clues. Ones they were going to talk about when they went fishing at the lake Saturday morning.
It was more of a pond, but after an explosive device had taken out half the hill and most of the ranch, leaving a big hole, what else was there to do except fill it with water and spend ten percent of the year’s budget stocking it with rainbow trout?
“Dad, Andra’s going to walk me to school.”
“Okay.” John hugged his son, who raced to the door, while Andra stepped into the room from upstairs. Her cheeks were flushed, and her hairline was damp.
“Didn’t go so well this morning?”
“The walk will do me good, and I’ll leave the door open so it doesn’t smell like coffee in here when I get back. That okay?”
“It’s not coffee,” John said. “That’s my new cologne. Eau de Java.”
Andra cracked a smile.
“There you are.”
“Yeah, yeah. Morning sickness is not my friend.”
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her forehead. Pat’s mother hadn’t suffered any morning sickness when she’d been pregnant with him, but John didn’t think Andra wanted that tidbit of information about a woman she’d never met and still managed to dislike.
He could feel the bump under her sweater and smiled, his lips still against her forehead. They’d have to start thinking about cribs and nursery colors soon. He’d have to wear a tool belt, and Andra would watch him with those dark eyes, and then—
“Can we go already?” Pat rolled his eyes. “You guys are gross. Get a room.”
John chuckled. “Pretty sure I have one upstairs.”
Andra smiled. “Let’s revisit that, later.”
“Deal.”
Her shoulders shook, and he felt the amusement deep in his chest as his son disappeared through the door. “Will I ever get over him being so big?”
“No.” Andra leaned back. “But he’ll have a little brother on his heels, so you can marvel that this one is so small.”
John smiled and leaned in for a kiss.
“Eau de Java.” She looked green.
John’s satellite phone rang. He leaned far enough back he could see the screen without letting her go. “It’s Grant.”
“Don’t just talk business. Actually ask him if he’s okay.”
John nodded. He said bye to his wife and then grabbed the phone from the desk. “Did you ever give up coffee when Genevieve was pregnant?”
“Dude that was like twenty years ago. I can barely remember the girls being in middle school at this point. Now I’m forking out college tuition like it’s going out of style.” He grumbled, but John knew how much Grant loved those girls. Divorce was just hard, and Grant’s had been final a few months ago.
“So what’s up?”
Grant had “retired” from the US Marshals, while John—as the sheriff of their witness protection town—was technically still a deputy inspector. Though the town was now managed by a private consortium of investors and no longer subject to federal oversight, John had kept his job. Grant, however, served as some kind of freelance liaison between the government connections he’d retained—basically everyone in D.C.—and Ben’s company. Which meant Grant was now a domestic man of mystery. John didn’t even want to know.
“Couple things. But first, you should know about Remy.” Grant filled him in on the man who’d broken into her house. “We were right, it’s Dante. We think they might be in Seattle. Shadrach and Ben are both headed there now.”
John blew out a breath. “I don’t like being benched on this one. Not with a DEA agent after them. Every corrupt federal agent and cop in the country is going to get a BOLO to keep their eyes peeled, with Nadia and Bolton’s descriptions on it.”
But he couldn’t help. John had people to protect here. The safeguards kept Sanctuary protected, and they were in a lull. While John was used to the problems being here, what he wasn’t used to was being removed from a problem that was out there. Especially when his wife’s best friend and a man he called friend were both in danger.
“It gets worse,” Grant said. “Dante escaped from federal prison a week ago. He’s in the wind, probably has an army of friends helping him stay in the shadows.”
“That wasn’t in the paper.”
“The feds are keeping it under wraps. They don’t want the press coverage. They just want to get him back in prison and avoid a PR nightmare.”
“Nadia had better not get caught in the crossfire,” John said. “Anything else?”
“The marshal over Bolton’s case was found dead in his house. Beaten badly, we think they interrogated him for information. Maybe they thought he’s been in contact with Bolton. Maybe he is. We’ll probably never know.”
John sighed. “Right.” Someone had to be helping the couple, given how effectively they’d slipped from everyone’s reach. But if it kept them safe, John didn’t care who it was.
“Then the other thing.”
“There’s more?”
Grant coughed a laugh. “Brother, there’s always more.” While John smiled to his empty office, Grant said, “I got a call from the marshal who was Hal’s contact, a million years ago when he signed his memorandum of understanding and first entered the witness protection program.”
Hal? A wave of grief hit John. The older biker had been a figurehead in this town, as much as he hadn’t wanted that notoriety, up until Tommy’s bomb left him dead. John squeezed his eyes shut. They’d buried Hal in town, not even knowing who his family was in order to inform them of his passing.
“It was totally out of the blue, this call. The man is like eighty-six. Hal was sixty-seven. Did you know he was the first person to live in Sanctuary? I didn’t even know that.”
John shook his head. “How do you know this now? You’re not even a marshal anymore.”
“Thanks for reminding me.” Grant’s voice was sardonic. “The congressional committee was disbanded, but the marshals kept me on as a liaison. The new director of the marshals was read in to the concept of a witness protection town, and now we go from there. Anyone who agrees to live in Sanctuary will testify, and afterwards, will step out from under the cover of the marshals’ service and enter private witness protection.”
John wasn’t worried about new enrollees. He had enough going on with the nearly two hundred residents currently living in town. And nothing would change for them, except funding would be better. Maybe they’d even be able to rebuild some of the houses so people didn’t have to live in forty-year-old government housing that had been patched up over and over.
“So, Hal’s case inspector?”
“Yep,” Grant said. “I can barely believe what he told me. I thought I knew every resident of Sanctuary, even the ones who moved there before I became director.”
“Or before you went to junior high.”
Grant laughed. “True. This guy’s story is unreal. Get this, Hal had a long-standing relationship with a woman in town.”
“I know about his ‘lady friend.’” Though that was all John knew. No one could identify her, and she hadn’t stepped forward.
“Did you know they had a daughter?”
“What?”
“And she lives in Sanctuary. One of your born-and-bred residents. The librarian—Gemma Freeman.”
John nearly stopped breathing. “Hal’s lady friend was Janice?”
“That was my reaction. Can you imagine, the biker and the hippy?”
“Not to mention they’re both older than dirt.”
Grant laughed out loud. He took a breath and groaned. “She has to be grieving, and no one even knows why.”
John’s heart turned over. Hal was gone. Why did it hit him like new every time? “I’ll go see her. Find out why Gemma doesn’t know that Hal was her father.” He’d seen her, and she wasn’t acting like a woman whose father had just died.
“I actually might know the answer to that,” Grant said. “I’ll send you the file Hal’s case inspector sent me. But you won’t believe half of what it says.”
Ten minutes later John’s iPad had finally downloaded the ginormous file. He swiped through the pages, and his eyebrows rose. These were the first documents ever to contain the name Sanctuary. Written forty years ago, they detailed the birth of the town he now called home. A town that had been established purely for the protection of one man.
Hal Leonard.
The older man John respected. The biker who refused to play anything but sixties and seventies rock on his radio station.
A man, it turned out, that none of them had really known.
**
Nadia gripped the door handle as Bolton slammed on the gas and the car fishtailed. She exhaled a long, slow breath trying to calm her heart rate. Those days of running, hiding—of being scared—were supposed to be over. And yet here she was, running again. Only now they seemed to be running from the police.
Bolton’s hands gripped the wheel. His attention was fully on the road, the traffic. Did he even remember she was still here?
“We should have stopped to talk to the cops. We could have told them about that man at the doctor’s house and how he tried to kill you.” The police could help them figure this out.
Bolton hit the brakes. He yanked the wheel to the right and parked—badly—at the curb. “The police aren’t going to help us.”
“Uh…that’s what they do.”
Bolton snorted. “Not with people like me.”
“What does that even mean? You aren’t different than anyone else.”
“No?”
There it was. Again. That feeling there was this huge thing she was missing. And because she didn’t know it, Bolton was treating her like a child. Sheltering her, like the world was this great evil out to get them, and they couldn’t trust anyone. But Nadia hadn’t made it this far without knowing precisely who her allies were. There were plenty of people she could call—if she could get their phone numbers.
“We aren’t going to the police. You think they set up road blocks for people they just want to ‘chat’ with?”
“How do you know those were for us?”
He glanced at her, one eyebrow raised over his hard eyes.
“It’s just a question. You don’t have to make me feel stupid.”
Bolton sighed. He pulled back onto the road, and they were driving again. “That’s not what I’m trying to do, Nadia. I’m keeping us safe.”
“Because there’s this great threat, and yet you can’t seem to explain to me why phones are off limits. Or why the police want to catch us.”
“Because Dante set them on us.”
“And a man in federal prison can command the police in that way? That makes no sense, Bolton.”
“He probably leaked enough information to make them think I’m Dante, so they’re on our tail. When they catch up with us, he’ll snap the trap closed. The police won’t know what happened, and we’ll be too dead to care. They’ll paint us as the bad guys.”
Nadia glanced out the window. She’d hated Manuel for what he’d done to her, trying to frame her for his illegal art deals and then trying to kill her so that he could get away with it. There had been enough evidence of things she’d done that it had made his assertion credible. Nadia had been sunk, until she’d turned herself in to the FBI with a flash drive from Manuel’s computer and told them the truth.
They’d offered her immunity for her small crimes in exchange for bringing down Manuel’s entire operation. Now Manuel was dead, Nadia had found everything she’d ever wanted in Sanctuary, and there was no going back. This was who she was, and it was where she needed to be again. And would have been, maybe even weeks ago, were it not for Bolton.
She sighed. “Where are we going?” He drove like he had a plan but not anywhere near their apartment. “I don’t suppose we’re headed in a roundabout way to pick up our clothes.” Her bible.
Their apartment had basically no furniture. They’d bought an old TV from a pawn shop and both slept on sleeping bags on the floor of the one room. It had been a sad existence, but a cheap one. Now that Bolton could walk, it made it worth it.
He didn’t answer her about where they were headed, so she said, “How is your back?”
“The anesthetic is wearing off.”
Which meant grumpy Bolton would reappear, the Bolton who didn’t want to take pain medication despite the fact he snapped at her every time she tried to help.
Nadia tried to remember why she wanted to be around him in the first place. Sanctuary had been in chaos. Bolton’s home had been destroyed. Tommy had been caught, and Bolton’s need for surgery had become imperative since a town resident slammed him on the back with a metal folding chair.
Nadia had wanted to be there when he had the surgery. She’d thought he wanted the same thing, so she’d convinced the sheriff to let her ride along in the helicopter with a special dispensation, given the circumstances.
Maybe Bolton had planned to get out of town for the surgery…and then disappear. In which case, he hadn’t wanted her there at all. Because he’d never intended to come back.
Bolton reached over and flipped on the radio. Apparently he didn’t even want to talk to her now.
Nadia blinked back tears. How had her life come to this?
“Police are on the lookout for a man in his late thirties with dark coloring, possibly of Middle Eastern descent, concerning the murder of two men, one a local doctor and the other who is believed to be a confidential informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration. The man is six-four, said to walk with a limp, and is wearing a black hoodie. He should be considered armed and extremely danger—”
Bolton snapped off the radio. “That’s why we’re not going to the police. I’ll end up doing life for a double homicide while Dante’s sentence is revoked and he sips mai-tai’s on some tropical island.”
And what about her? “They didn’t mention me on the broadcast.”
“That’s a good thing. It means we’ve kept you under the radar.” Bolton pulled up at a stop light. “I don’t think I even want to know what that look on your face means.”
He took a right and headed for the highway. Nadia hadn’t been out of Seattle since the day they arrived, but apparently Bolton knew every street and exactly how to get wherever he wanted to go. Five miles later traffic slowed, and they faced another set of flashing lights.
Bolton slammed the wheel with the heel of his hand. “Roadblock.”
“So we’re trapped?”
“They want us in the city so they can hunt us down. If we leave then we’re in the wind, but we have an advantage Dante doesn’t know about.”
Nadia shook her head. “What?”
“You. Dante doesn’t know I’m with you, and his men aren’t looking for a couple. The cops aren’t looking for a couple. They’re looking for a lone man, and you’re enough to distract them away from me.”
Nadia didn’t know whether to be flattered or not. “What’s with the Middle Eastern thing? Does Dante know something I don’t? I mean, your last name is Farrera. I thought you were Hispanic… Farrera isn’t your name, is it?”
“Actually Bolton Farrera was the name my parents gave me when they moved here, from Albania. It’s probably the most honest thing I have that’s still mine, even though it isn’t even my birth name. They purposely gave me an American name, but one that could be either Hispanic or even Italian. Add to that the American accent, and it made me blend in better.”
“Why did you need to blend in?”
“We need to figure out a way out of town.” He scanned the area, both sides of the road.
Nadia studied his face. Had she ever really looked at him? Sure, she’d gazed. But that wasn’t what she was doing now. This was the moment the maze dead-ended, and the only way out was to back-track halfway to the entrance in order to figure out where the center was. Did Bolton even have a center? If he did, he’d probably never show it to her. Maybe she could get back to Sanctuary, but she’d have to live the rest of her life never knowing what could have been with Bolton.
His gaze snagged on hers. “You’re doing that face thing again.”
“You want me to be happy? I don’t think I can fake that.” Nadia sighed. “I’m just facing the fact that nothing is going to work out the way I thought it would.” Nadia swallowed against the lump in her throat. “After I help you, I need to get back to Sanctuary. But I don’t know how that’s possible now. If Grant Mason isn’t in charge of witness protection, then who is going to help me?” Nadia swiped at the tears trailing down her cheeks.
Bolton muttered and pulled out of traffic. “We have to get out of here, Nadia. We don’t have time for this.” He shoved the car in park, opened the door, and grabbed her hand. Bolton pulled her down the embankment.
“Hey!”
Nadia glanced back. A cop pointed at them. Four uniformed officers ran toward her and Bolton.
“Run!” Bolton dragged her along. She could have argued she was fitter than he was, but the pace he set was punishing. It had to hurt. He pulled out a cell phone and dialed with one hand.
“You have a—”
He’d had a phone this whole time, all the while telling her she shouldn’t even go near one?
Bolton’s voice was breathy, his teeth gritted together. “Because they’re after us, Ben. This isn’t working.”